Checked the Gox graph lately? The last time BTC prices crashed this hard, Dwolla had just gotten snuffed out. Any idea what we're looking at this time? My guess is it has something to do with their policy change about account verification for fiat currency withdraws. Suppose it's going to jump back again? If so, it's a great time to swap your Gox dollars for BTC and sell them elsewhere if you don't just use them up instead. If it stabilizes at around $100, no big deal, still worth it for me. If it keeps dropping... Party's over! Everyone out of the pool. ASIC owners will enjoy their fancy bricks while GPU miners play games at max video settings.

Checked the Gox graph lately? The last time BTC prices crashed this hard, Dwolla had just gotten snuffed out. Any idea what we're looking at this time? My guess is it has something to do with their policy change about account verification for fiat currency withdraws. Suppose it's going to jump back again? If so, it's a great time to swap your Gox dollars for BTC and sell them elsewhere if you don't just use them up instead. If it stabilizes at around $100, no big deal, still worth it for me. If it keeps dropping... Party's over! Everyone out of the pool. ASIC owners will enjoy their fancy bricks while GPU miners play games at max video settings.

It's really not much to worry about. If you'd have been watching the price for the last two years you would realize that this is the most stable it has been since it was around $5 / btc. The price of btc has been super volatile over the last 2-3 years...

Checked the Gox graph lately? The last time BTC prices crashed this hard, Dwolla had just gotten snuffed out. Any idea what we're looking at this time? My guess is it has something to do with their policy change about account verification for fiat currency withdraws. Suppose it's going to jump back again? If so, it's a great time to swap your Gox dollars for BTC and sell them elsewhere if you don't just use them up instead. If it stabilizes at around $100, no big deal, still worth it for me. If it keeps dropping... Party's over! Everyone out of the pool. ASIC owners will enjoy their fancy bricks while GPU miners play games at max video settings.

So I was under the impression that the difficulty just meant that blocks were found more slowly. But it appears that my hashrate has fallen about 20% across all of my miners. Is this to be expected? I'll check the miners when I get home, but I thought my MH/s would remain unaffected, I would just have a smaller payout.

I guess I'm still a little unclear how the difficulty affects the mining. Can someone enlighten me on what my expectations should be?

So I was under the impression that the difficulty just meant that blocks were found more slowly. But it appears that my hashrate has fallen about 20% across all of my miners. Is this to be expected? I'll check the miners when I get home, but I thought my MH/s would remain unaffected, I would just have a smaller payout.

I guess I'm still a little unclear how the difficulty affects the mining. Can someone enlighten me on what my expectations should be?

The Pool GH/s has gone up another 1,000 gh/s which effects pay out % not your hashrate, nor would a diff increase that happened yesterday morning effect a hasah rate a day later....

However you are saying your HASHRATE went down.... I know some IP's were offline all morning so maybe you were using those ip's and therefore not mining for an hour or 2.

Checked the Gox graph lately? The last time BTC prices crashed this hard, Dwolla had just gotten snuffed out. Any idea what we're looking at this time? My guess is it has something to do with their policy change about account verification for fiat currency withdraws. Suppose it's going to jump back again? If so, it's a great time to swap your Gox dollars for BTC and sell them elsewhere if you don't just use them up instead. If it stabilizes at around $100, no big deal, still worth it for me. If it keeps dropping... Party's over! Everyone out of the pool. ASIC owners will enjoy their fancy bricks while GPU miners play games at max video settings.

It's really not much to worry about. If you'd have been watching the price for the last two years you would realize that this is the most stable it has been since it was around $5 / btc. The price of btc has been super volatile over the last 2-3 years...

So I was under the impression that the difficulty just meant that blocks were found more slowly. But it appears that my hashrate has fallen about 20% across all of my miners. Is this to be expected? I'll check the miners when I get home, but I thought my MH/s would remain unaffected, I would just have a smaller payout.

I guess I'm still a little unclear how the difficulty affects the mining. Can someone enlighten me on what my expectations should be?

Hashrate follen? Reword or hashrate? If you didn't lost a card it shouldn't drop. Unless you are spiking about reword for block...

Checked the Gox graph lately? The last time BTC prices crashed this hard, Dwolla had just gotten snuffed out. Any idea what we're looking at this time? My guess is it has something to do with their policy change about account verification for fiat currency withdraws. Suppose it's going to jump back again? If so, it's a great time to swap your Gox dollars for BTC and sell them elsewhere if you don't just use them up instead. If it stabilizes at around $100, no big deal, still worth it for me. If it keeps dropping... Party's over! Everyone out of the pool. ASIC owners will enjoy their fancy bricks while GPU miners play games at max video settings.

It's really not much to worry about. If you'd have been watching the price for the last two years you would realize that this is the most stable it has been since it was around $5 / btc. The price of btc has been super volatile over the last 2-3 years...

So I was under the impression that the difficulty just meant that blocks were found more slowly. But it appears that my hashrate has fallen about 20% across all of my miners. Is this to be expected? I'll check the miners when I get home, but I thought my MH/s would remain unaffected, I would just have a smaller payout.

I guess I'm still a little unclear how the difficulty affects the mining. Can someone enlighten me on what my expectations should be?

Hashrate follen? Reword or hashrate? If you didn't lost a card it shouldn't drop. Unless you are spiking about reword for block...

Both; And I have several machines mining, and they've all dropped off. Some 10%, some 25%. But across the board, every device has lost hashing power.

I know that Slush's report of my hashrate can be a little off, but it's been consistently down since yesterday AND the reward has fallen in tandem.

The difficulty changes are designed to keep blocks being found at a steady pace. So when the total hash rate of the network goes up, and blocks start getting found faster, the difficulty will go up so that blocks will continue to be found at the same rate.

That's how we can predict when the next block halving will be. It's all about math. And the reason your reward goes down, is because there is more hashing power finding about the same amount of blocks. So if you don't increase your hash power at the same rate the network/pool hash rate increases, then your share of the pie will get smaller.

The difficulty changes are designed to keep blocks being found at a steady pace. So when the total hash rate of the network goes up, and blocks start getting found faster, the difficulty will go up so that blocks will continue to be found at the same rate.

That's how we can predict when the next block halving will be. It's all about math. And the reason your reward goes down, is because there is more hashing power finding about the same amount of blocks. So if you don't increase your hash power at the same rate the network/pool hash rate increases, then your share of the pie will get smaller.

So the lower hashrate is specific to me, correct? What I SHOULD see is the same hashrate, the same payout just less often.

Checked the Gox graph lately? The last time BTC prices crashed this hard, Dwolla had just gotten snuffed out. Any idea what we're looking at this time? My guess is it has something to do with their policy change about account verification for fiat currency withdraws. Suppose it's going to jump back again? If so, it's a great time to swap your Gox dollars for BTC and sell them elsewhere if you don't just use them up instead. If it stabilizes at around $100, no big deal, still worth it for me. If it keeps dropping... Party's over! Everyone out of the pool. ASIC owners will enjoy their fancy bricks while GPU miners play games at max video settings.

It's really not much to worry about. If you'd have been watching the price for the last two years you would realize that this is the most stable it has been since it was around $5 / btc. The price of btc has been super volatile over the last 2-3 years...

Nothing to see here, move along...

Digital, you mentioned virwox as one of you're btc selling sites of choice. Does it take a while to get usd out of there? I've got a bunch in BTC-E i'm gonna unload when the price recovers and need a better/faster place to dump some coins. Thanks in advance.

incase people haven't realised it, the easiest way to turn BTCs into US$ is to buy ASICminers and sell them on eBay. heh.

lol i bought 1 in arklan's group buy and its mining away happily right now. Was gonna buy more and sell on ebay, but everyone else has the same idea and the price will adjust itself accordingly i'm guessing.

incase people haven't realised it, the easiest way to turn BTCs into US$ is to buy ASICminers and sell them on eBay. heh.

lol i bought 1 in arklan's group buy and its mining away happily right now. Was gonna buy more and sell on ebay, but everyone else has the same idea and the price will adjust itself accordingly i'm guessing.

yeah but the price shouldn't drop below the exchange rate, otherwise it makes more sense to use them yourself.

The difficulty changes are designed to keep blocks being found at a steady pace. So when the total hash rate of the network goes up, and blocks start getting found faster, the difficulty will go up so that blocks will continue to be found at the same rate.

That's how we can predict when the next block halving will be. It's all about math. And the reason your reward goes down, is because there is more hashing power finding about the same amount of blocks. So if you don't increase your hash power at the same rate the network/pool hash rate increases, then your share of the pie will get smaller.

So the lower hashrate is specific to me, correct? What I SHOULD see is the same hashrate, the same payout just less often.

Your hash rate should be stable - it will fluctuate slightly depending on individual worker luck - but if you had about 2 GH/s last week, then you should still have 2 GH/s this week. This is regardless of difficulty increases, increases in the pool hash rate or increases in the network hash rate.

That is the easy bit - your own hash rate is a relative constant.

Now, assuming your own hash rate remains constant (and you not adding in lots of usb miners - so you stay at 2 GH/s):

1) If the pool hash rate increases but the total network hash rate stays the same (so in other words, other existing miners move their rigs over to slush's pool)?

Then you should expect to find blocks more frequently - but your share of the payouts will go down slightly. Net effect is you earn the same over a week.

2) If slush's pool hash rate remains the same but the overall network hash rate increases?

Then you should expect to find blocks less frequently - but your share of the payouts will remain the same. Net effect is you earn less per week.

Digital, you mentioned virwox as one of you're btc selling sites of choice. Does it take a while to get usd out of there? I've got a bunch in BTC-E i'm gonna unload when the price recovers and need a better/faster place to dump some coins. Thanks in advance.

Not at all. But only if you use paypal.

I always use paypal. Usually it takes a couple hours total. And that includes confirmations.

Here's the process (it was a little confusing for me at first):

You deposit btc into your virwox wallett, wait for them to confirmSell the BTC for SLLSell the SLL for USDWithdraw the USD via paypal.

Sometimes there is a delay before the paypal transaction gets proessed, but I've never had the total process take more than 6 hours. And it works just as easy in reverse. In my opinion it's the best way to buy and sell btc via paypal.

EDIT: Fair warning though, it tends to be a little more pricey than waiting. But for me it's worth the extra cost for getting my money (or btc) fast.